Amazon Cracks Down On E-Book Publishers Using Private Label Rights

Amazon has started to crack down on the publishing of e-books that use the private label rights or PLR. PLR is a way that a writer can write a digital book for the Kindle service and then sell the rights to other people to republish it as their own. It's like writing a how-to book and then selling publishing rights to others. The problem with this is that the same book ends up in the Kindle store with different titles and names associated with it confusing the customer.

Amazon is trying to fix the issue and prevent confusion on the Kindle store and has started to remove PLR e-books that are on the store. Amazon's official reason for removing the books sent to the people that publish them is that the copycat books "diminish the experience for customers." Amazon states that it has been working hard to eliminate books that are no different from another on the store or that are barely different for a long time.

The idea behind publishing the PLR books is that the person publishing it is supposed to make the book their own. Often the publisher simply formats and posts the books. One of these publishers had 22 books on the market and saw them all removed. The publisher said it "was a kick in the pants," but the publisher also said that he knew what he was "trying to pull a fast one" and would get caught.

[via NYTimes]